Appeal No. 2006-1221
Application No. 09/846,995
disclosure of indicating to the user (i.e., with an SMS message) that an outage “will occur at
a certain point in time” [col. 8, line 52]. Because an outage clearly results in “reduced user
terminal performance,” we find that Maveddat’s SMS message does inform a user of a
potential for reduced user performance, as claimed.
III. Appellants argue that Rydbeck does not teach a controller responsive to at least one
criteria having been met for activating an indicator for informing the user of a potential for
reduced user terminal performance [reply brief, page 4, brief, page 5, ¶4 through page 6, ¶4].
The examiner responds that he did not rely upon Rydbeck to teach the claimed
controller and that Rydbeck was only used to show that it is obvious to have an indicator on a
mobile device to indicate a condition of the device [answer, page 9]. The examiner also
notes that the argued claim limitations are much broader than the description in the
disclosure, and as a result the claims do read upon Maveddat [answer, page 8]. The examiner
observes that mobile phones have display controllers or indicator controllers that activate the
displays or indicators upon receiving a signal [answer, page 8].
One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the
rejections are based on combinations of references. In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 F.2d 1091,
1097, 231 USPQ 375, 380 (Fed. Cir. 1986). We agree with the examiner for essentially the
same reasons argued in the answer [pages 8-9]. We note that the examiner’s rejections of
claims 1, 10, and 19 rely upon Maveddat (and not Rydbeck) for the teaching of the claimed
controller: “Maveddat discloses said user terminal comprising a controller responsive to at
least one criterion having been met for activating a message for informing a user of a
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